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Book review: Game Changers – The Unfounded Fears and Future Prosperity of the Residential Real Estate Industry

This past April, I had the opportunity to attend the REAL Trends Gathering of Eagles event in Dallas. Steve Murray and his team put together a great program, including a session with former President George W. Bush. I walked away impressed.

After a few months of sitting on a shelf in my office, I finally got around to reading it over the past month. Here are my thoughts regarding the book.

Before beginning, I must state that this is a domain specific book meant for people in the real estate industry. It applies to those who own a brokerage, are part of a brokerage support team, are an agent, or provide a service or technology to the industry. If this doesn’t describe you, you’re going to find it extremely boring.

What I liked about Game Changers

I liked that the chapters are stand alone. If some topics interest you more than others, you can start with those. There is very little dependency, if any, between chapters, so you won’t miss out on anything if you jump around the book.

Another item I liked are the executive summaries at the end of the book. They provide an overview of the key findings and help to prioritize which chapters you’ll want to dig into first. A word of caution: I wouldn’t recommend solely relying on the executive summaries. You’ll miss out on a lot of the gems and clarifications contained within the chapters.

The book is also easy to read and to the point. There is very little wasted space and extra fluff in the book. In other words, this wasn’t an effort to produce a book that filled a certain number of pages. It’s meant to present ideas and insight into challenges facing the future of the industry. The result is that the book is a bit disjointed in places and lacks transition between some key ideas, but this is an obvious artifact of the desire to stay on point and not create filler for the sake of adding pages to the book.

What I got out of Game Changers

There were three key things I got out of reading the book:

It helped me to understand the key trends shaping the industry and provided more insight into the inner workings of the industry. This was especially valuable since I’ve only provided technology to the industry and haven’t worked in it as an agent or broker.

It challenged the thoughts and beliefs that I had about the industry, including those about the people in and around it.

It sharpened my strategic thinking around the industry and how to approach it with my business. There are a few ideas I got from reading the book that I’m looking forward to putting into practice for customers I am working with and new customers that I am discussing potential projects with.

If you decide to read the book, you may not get the same things out of it, which is why I would strongly recommend that you read it critically. Don’t just take what is presented at face value, but challenge it and see if it fits with your experience and perspectives on the industry. You’ll also find that it will help you to develop your own ideas that apply to your particular situation or business that you can put into practice.

Summary

Overall, Game Changers is the best book you can read that confronts and dissects the key issues facing the real estate industry. Whether or not you agree with the viewpoints and findings presented, it will challenge and help you to think strategically about the long-term prospects of the industry whether you are an owner, agent, staff member or service provider.